The bacteriological diagnosis of certain infectious diseases in connexion with public health work / by Sheridan Delépine.

  • Delépine, Sheridan, 1855-1921.
Date:
[1898]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The bacteriological diagnosis of certain infectious diseases in connexion with public health work / by Sheridan Delépine. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    prevalence of certain diseases at various times and in™™a Places and also the amount of improvement which preventive measures have produced, but these returns will be misleading if not based on sufficiently accurate data, comparable with each other wherever and by whomsoever they have been collected. 2. Isolation of patients affected with a certain contagious disease in hospitals provided for that disease becomes a source of contagion if patients affected with other diseases are sent by mistake to those hospitals. 3. The cost ot isolation is thereby increased as well as the waste of working energy 4. The knowledge of disease and of its treatment is retarded owing to the fact that practices based on error, not being checked, are allowed to grow into routine, supposed cases of recovery from certain diseases are recorded where the disease never existed, fatal terminations follow supposed mild illnesses which should have taken a benign course, and doubt is made to reign where progress might have been expected. It must be well understood that I speak ot those errors of diagnosis to which the most careful and ex- perienced men are liable. As to those errors which are the result of gross ignorance or of systematic practice I do not even allude to them here as their existence should be ignored, but so far as they are a discredit to our profession any method which should give the means of checking such abuses would be of great value. _ . I think that so far I have expressed nothing which will not be readily admitted. There remains for me to prove by practical results that we have now at our disposal several bacteriological methods giving us the means of increasing con- siderably the accuracy of early diagnosis of a certain number of infectious diseases. As these methods have been exten- sively tried in my laboratory at the Owens College for the last five years I am able to submit to you the results of my personal experience. The diseases with regard to which I have been able to give assistance to the Public Health Department of Manchester and surrounding towns have been chiefly tuberculosis, typhoid fever, diphtheria, cholera, epidemic diarrhoea or gastro-enteritis, hydrophobia, anthrax and food poisoning. This naturally does not include all the cases in which assistance may be given by bacteriology. To show how the work is done and answers administrative purposes it will be sufficient to refer specially to three diseases which are con- stantly with us, and the bacteriological diagnosis of which is based on four different types of methods. I refer to tuberculosis, diphtheria, and typhoid fever.